


Into The Forest

by Seiya234



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-19 01:43:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2369795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seiya234/pseuds/Seiya234
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Miss Mabel Pines learns to box, finds out that pixies like to chew on your hair for some reason, climbs all the trees, meets a demonic dorito, and generally has a very good summer full of personal growth and such things like that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Into The Forest

At home, in Piedmont, there was a small patch of woods with a creek bubbling through it near their house. It was a tantalizing place to Mabel, especially when they drove by with the windows open occasionally and she could swear she could hear the burble of the water in the creek bed. It was four or five blocks away and she and Dipper were forbidden to go there.  

“It’s too dangerous honey,” her mother told her, time and time again (because Mabel was nothing if persistent). “There may be hunters or vagrants there that could hurt you. Not to mention it’s probably full of broken glass and nails and garbage and things you shouldn’t be around”  

“But it’s so close and it’s not that big and if I need help I can yell and I’d have Dipper with me and-“  

“I said no young lady. End of discussion.” Seeing the dejected look on Mabel’s face, her mom offered, “if you want to play outside, why don’t you go into the back yard?”  

The back yard, she thought dejectedly as she swing in the tire swing. Not even the front. Twelve years old and she couldn’t even walk around the neighborhood on her own unless Dipper went with her.

To be fair, the same went for Dipper but the point was she didn’t want to just play, she wanted to explore. She was tired of being cooped up in this little yard, in the house.   She wasn’t as big of a hurry to grow up, not like Dipper was. But she also hated this feeling of being trapped in her own skin at times, full of fire and no way to let it out

.  ——  

Stan didn’t just mind them wandering around the entire town by themselves, but they could go into the thick forest surrounding the Mystery Shack as well.  

When he told them that (or more accurately, he said “Go outside and blow some stink off”), Mabel may or may not have run in little circles ululating with joy.  

(Grunkle Stan leaned down to Dipper; “Is that, er, normal?” Dipper nodded.)  

The first few forays into town and woods they went together but then one morning Dipper refused to get up.  

“Mabes,” he grumbled from under his pillow, “it’s Sunday and I’m tired. I’m going back to sleep.” No amount of cajoling, tickling, or jumping on the bed would budge him.

  She went downstairs, anticipating a morning of being cooped up inside. She went into the kitchen where Grunkle Stan was pouring a bowl of cereal. Hmm…it couldn’t hurt to ask…

“Grunkle Stan, can I go out to the woods by myself?”

Grunkle Stan looked blearily through the thick lenses of his glasses at her. “Er, yeah, sure, go knock yourself out.”

Mabel sucked in a massive breath and was about to squeal but Grunkle Stan’s self preservation instinct kicked in.

“Look kid, I trust you. I mean, you’re twelve. You know not to eat random shi-er, berries and stuff right?”

Mabel nodded.

“And you know how to deal if somethi-one tries to bother you?”

“Give them a good kickening.”

“Ehhhh we’ll work on that. But for now, you’re fine. Go on outsi-“

He didn’t have a chance to finish before Mabel was out the door and running out into the woods.

—-

Thinking back on it later, those times in the woods were when she first learned, truly learned, to enjoy her own company.

(she suspected Dipper would have been a little more hurt but he was really enjoying all the extra sleep)

She ran just for the sheer joy of running, until she would just collapse on the ground. She would lay there and look up at what little sky she saw through the trees and feel her heart beat against the ground.

Though after collapsing into a patch of poison ivy, she learned to be a little more circumspect in collapsing places.

There was a creek that ran through the woods that she would wade in, looking for frogs and crawfish and minnows. The water was cold against her skin, and nothing felt greater than to dig her toes into the pebbles and sand that made up the creek bed.

She climbed trees.

She climbed _all the trees_ …well okay, the ones that offered little knots or baby branches low enough to the ground to get her started on climbing. But then there was the magic day she found a tree that she could both climb and was so tall that when she could go no further she could see the entire town around her. It took a terrifying hour to get down but it was worth it, for that five to ten minutes where she hung in the air and felt like she was flying.

—-

In the first few weeks they were there, Grunkle Stan had shown them both some basic self defense moves; how to get out of someone’s grip and run, how to shake off a hand on your shoulder and run, et cetera.

Two days after the whole “Dipper-Raising-The-Dead-Even-Though-I-Told-Him-Not-To” incident, she went up to Grunkle Stan in the Shack.

He looked up from counting his money. “What?”

“Can you teach me how to box?” she asked.

Grunkle Stan raised an eyebrow.

“What makes you think I can do that kid?”

“Grunkle Staaaan! You’ve punched pterodactyls and zombies, of course you can box!”

(Mabel did not mention that she knew darn well he could box because Dipper told her what he saw in his head, but that would have been rude…she thought. Maybe. Eh, either way, best not to mention it)

He gave her an…odd look for a minute. Anyone else, she would have said it was because she was a girl and they were being dumb. But with Grunkle Stan, she thought it was something deeper.

He let his breath out. “Okay, sure.”

She squealed and gave him a big hug.

“Oh god, Mabel, my ribs!”

Every afternoon for the rest of that summer (and for every visit after that because after that summer she and Dipper pretty much spent every vacation in Gravity Falls) they spent an hour boxing and sparring. It was a little hard because she didn’t have a partner anywhere near her weight or height but they made it work.

It all helped that one day when there was a tourist who was 18 or 19 and decided that he and Mabel would have a little ‘fun’ behind the Shack and grabbed her from behind when she was taking the trash out.

"I know your hack Uncle won’t mind," he told her, and her vision went red.

The next thing she knew, she had wriggled her way out of his grasp and had him on the ground clutching his ribs and sobbing..Then Grunkle Stan came at the sound of her shouting and the teen’s day got far worse.

——-

He was the vampire boy of her dreams…literally, because Mabel was pretty sure she was dreaming right now.

Point being, he had black hair, he was tall, he sparkled (yes he sparkled goshdarnit), he had one goat eye and a triangle bolo tie and wait now…

“Bill,” she said, as deadpan and serious as one could be in a diaphanous, several layered gown that was flowing constantly in a continuously flowing breeze.

(It may or may not have been a copy of the one on the cover of a book that Grenda had snitched from her mom and brought over two days ago)

“At your service Shooting Star,” he trilled, dipping into a deep bow.

“I…I didn’t invite you in here!” Mabel quavered slightly, now wrapped in her biggest, most oversized sweater-the one that hid her hands deep in the sleeves and went to her knees.

“Of course you didn’t silly! But,” and here his voice dropped, deeper, lower, and darker than the ocean, “I don’t need one.”

A second passed, and Bill’s voice snapped back to normal. “No kid, your fear tastes delicious and all but I just came by to give you a warning!”

Mabel huddled deeper into her sweater. “What?”

Bill swirled a cane that he summoned to hand and suddenly he was surrounded in blue flames.

“Stop going into that forest Shooting Star, and stay home. There are dangers there, things even I cannot see. And the Pine Tree and Waxing Moon won’t be there to help you forever. You will get caught out there alone, eventually. That I promise.”

A beat. “So the forest is dangerous?”

Bill smacked himself in the forehead. “Yes I just told you that!”

Mabel smiled. “Yeah well so are KITTEN HANDS!” Her safety sweater was replaced with one of her normal ones, revealing the kitten hands she had been hiding all along. She began shooting kitten heads at Bill.

“Ack, alright, fine, I’m leaving!” he said as he floated away.

Mabel shot awake, looking around quickly for a floating dorito with a top hat. She didn’t see him but she wasn’t surprised.

Dangerous huh? Of course the forest was dangerous. But it was also wonderful and beautiful and fun. Not to mention if he felt the need to warn her off of going then, duh, of course she would keep going, if only to see what he didn’t want her to see.

Not to mention that Mabel knew, almost instinctively, that people like Bill would never tell a lie when a half truth could wound so much more

——-

Two months was not a very long time, Mabel thought as she lay between Candy and Grenda on the bed.

This slumber party, for example, had flown by in a whirl of sparkles, nail polish, books secretly checked out from the library, ice cream, more sparkles, and the lizard in the closet.

She thought she was tired too when Candy abruptly fell back on the bed asleep and she and Grenda silently agreed that perhaps they should go to sleep as well but now all she could think about was that two months was not a long time.

Sooner or later, summer would be over and Dipper and her would have to leave Gravity Falls.

Leave Candy and Grenda.

Leave Soos and Wendy and Waddles.

Leave Grunkle Stan.

Leave and go back to normal…she wasn’t even thinking about all the freaky stuff Dipper and her had found but normal where they would never get offered boxing lessons or allowed to ride their bikes all around or walk to the store that was only ten blocks away.

They had grown so much, it felt like (not including that centimeter she had on Dipper). How could they go back to how they had been before?

Grenda let out a snore and Candy flipped over in her sleep, bringing her back to the here and now.

So they had to leave eventually and that was…was…poop. Yes! Poop, utter poop.

That just meant she should enjoy the time that they had here in Gravity Falls.

Not to mention she had a suspicion time passed slower here than the rest of the world.

(She mentioned her idea to Dipper and a call to their parents confirmed it-Piedmont was three days ahead of them, somehow.

Mabel was glad for the extra time, and Dipper was happy to have another mystery to solve).

—————-

 

“In Gravity Falls there is no one you can trust.”

Well, that is silly because she trusts Wendy and Soos and Grenda and Candy. She even trusts Grunkle Stan, if only to be…um, Grunkly.

And above all else, she trusts Dipper.

There will never be a day where she doesn’t trust him.

(though trusting him unconditionally didn’t mean that if he was acting dumb she wouldn’t point that out to him.)

Like now, for instance, when she pointed out to Dipper that “Trust no one…doesn’t that mean the Author too?”

Dipper looked up from where he was lying on his bed, looking at one of the pages under the black light.

"What…what do you mean Mabel?"

"Wellllll," Mabel said, giving Waddles some tummy scritches on her bed. "What if the Author um, I don’t know, lied about something in the book? Or they think they know the truth but they’re wrong or they aren’t actually nice or-"

"Mabel!"

Dipper was actually red, which only happened when he was upset or embarrassed or eating spicy food.

"Why would he-"

"Or she"

"-or she lie? It’s their journal!" And with that Dipper huffed and turned over a bit.

Mabel knew that she and Dipper were good at different things, smart in different ways, but it was a bit frustrating that Dipper was so smart and he didn’t get the point she was trying to make at all.

Because she knew that the journal said that pixies were invasive pests that you should try and exterminate posthaste but the pixies that she met seemed rather harmless. Annoying because they wanted to just talk and talk and talk and talk, but harmless.

(They looked at her hands and seemed relieved to count only five fingers on them and not six)

She kept giving Waddles scritches. Perhaps he’d see eventually.

——-

When Gideon broke out of jail, there was a part of her that wasn’t really that surprised (she knew Dipper felt the same).

And neither was she totally surprised when Gideon had her cornered in the woods, her back against a pine tree and Gideon in…robo-stilts? Ohmygosh if it weren’t Gideon wearing them she would be squeeing over robo-stilts so bad.

“Stanford and that brother of yours are tied up at the Shack-“

At that Mabel couldn’t help, despite the imminent danger, letting out a little groan and Gideon huffed.

"No dumpling I mean I literally had them tied up; I had Sailor Sam pay them a visit. But enough of that-" and here he leaned in, what little jollity he had gone and replaced with menace. "It’s just you and I, Mabel Pines. No one will interrupt us here. No one is going to ‘rescue’ you."

Out of the corner of her eye a shadow, isosceles like, flitted by.

No one to rescue her.

Gideon was puckering up like a fish, and looking at her expectedly (ew).

"Okay Gideon, you win. But if you…if we are going to kiss, I need to be able to reach your lips silly!”

"Oh, yes, of course my queen!" and with that Gideon pressed a button on the sides of his robo-stilts and they disassembled, taking him from three times Mabel’s height back down to normal.

"Oh Gideon," she breathed as he leaned in eyes closed

Then she cocked her fist like Grunkle Stan showed her and broke his nose.

She kicked him in the place Grunkle Stan said she should always kick too, for good measure, and then took off running

(in her mind, she heard Grunkle Stan tell her again “Kid, right now, you probably won’t win a fight. That will come when you’re a little taller. Let’s focus on getting you to a place where you can take someone down and then run for help)

She couldn’t believe Gideon fell for that but then again, Gideon did make a deal with Bill _without even asking him what he wanted from Gideon_. (no offense to Dipping Sauce of course; he wasn’t in a good place).

Mabel Pines didn’t need anyone to rescue her. She could rescue herself.

Which was good because right now she needed to worry about rescuing her brother and uncle.

——

The day they had to go back was sad and it hurt, oh gosh did it hurt. But it hurt a little less for two reasons.

One was knowing, thanks to a phone call they and then Grunkle Stan had made to their parents and they were going to come back for Winter Break which was almost a month!

(also, Grunkle Stan was going to come to them for Thanksgiving which as Dipper put it, was going to be _interesting_.)

The second was the fez that Stan had taken off his head and put on hers, and the bikes he had sent ahead that was waiting for them when they got home.

(“Think of it as a summer’s worth of wages,” Stan told Anne on the phone when she started to fret. “They-” he looked over at the couch where the twins had collapsed on each other like puppies, completely unconscious.

"They deserve it," he said, and even if his niece-in-law didn’t hear it, he meant that in more ways than one.)


End file.
